Clark Kent's Been Right All Along: Study Shows That Glasses Really Do Keep Your Identity Secret

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After all these years, isn't it amazing how Clark Kent can still wander through the streets of Metropolis with those chiseled features and bookish glasses and yet most people never manage to guess his true identity? Well, a new study indicates that people's obliviousness isn't that surprising after all. So, what's the super secret to perfecting your outer alias?

A new study from University of York found that when people were presented with side-by-side images of faces, they could correctly identify the same people 80% of the time. That percentage dropped to just 74% when some of the people in the pictures were wearing glasses. Kay Ritchie, co-author of the study from the psychology department at the University of York put it in perspective:

A 6% drop in performance may not sound like much, but if you consider the number of people who go through passport control at Atlanta International airport every year — over 100 million last year — a 6% drop in accuracy equates to 6 million misidentifications.

Or, in the case of Metropolis (pop. 11 million), that's 660,000 people (plus the 2,200,000 that were pretty bad at recognizing faces in the first place) that can't tell the difference between this guy:

Christopher Reeve as Clark Kent/Superman

...and this guy:

The study found that people are so good at recognizing faces familiar to them that they often think they are just as good at recognizing other faces, but that isn't necessarily true. Ritchie added:

This robust ability to recognize familiar faces often leads us to incorrectly think we are good at recognizing all faces.